ecause (with tears
in his voice) I can do nothing but cry with rage when I am met with
violence--because I can't lift a heavy trunk down from the top of a cab
like you--because I can't fight you for your wife as a navvy would: all
that makes you think that I'm afraid of you. But you're wrong. If I
haven't got what you call British pluck, I haven't British cowardice
either: I'm not afraid of a clergyman's ideas. I'll fight your ideas.
I'll rescue her from her slavery to them: I'll pit my own ideas against
them. You are driving me out of the house because you daren't let her
choose between your ideas and mine. You are afraid to let me see her
again. (Morell, angered, turns suddenly on him. He flies to the door in
involuntary dread.) Let me alone, I say. I'm going.

MORELL (with cold scorn). Wait a moment: I am not going to touch you:
don't be afraid. When my wife comes back she will want to know why you
have gone. And when she finds that you are never going to cross our
threshold again, she will want to have that explained, too. Now I don't
wish to distress her by telling her that you have behaved like a
blackguard.

MARCHBANKS (Coming back with renewed vehemence). You shall--you must.
If you give any explanation but the true one, you are a liar and a
coward. Tell her what I said; and how you were strong and manly, and
shook me as a terrier shakes a rat; and how I shrank and was terrified;
and how you called me a snivelling little whelp and put me out of the
house. If you don't tell her, I will: I'll write to her.

MORELL (taken aback.) Why do you want her to know this?

MARCHBANKS (with lyric rapture.) Because she will understand me, and
know that I understand her. If you keep back one word of it from
her--if you are not ready to lay the truth at her feet as I am--then
you will know to the end of your days that she really belongs to me and
not to you. Good-bye. (Going.)

MORELL (terribly disquieted). Stop: I will not tell her.

MARCHBANKS (turning near the door). Either the truth or a lie you MUST
tell her, if I go.

MORELL (temporizing). Marchbanks: it is sometimes justifiable.

MARCHBANKS (cutting him short). I know--to lie. It will be useless.
Good-bye, Mr. Clergyman.

(As he turns finally to the door, it opens and Candida enters in
housekeeping attire.)

CANDIDA. Are you going, Eugene?(Looking more observantly at him.) Well,
dear me, just look at you, going out into the street in that state! You
ARE a p